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Date-Time Arguments

You can specify date  and  time  arguments  to  many  of  the  TOPS-20
commands.


Date

The examples below show the various formats that  are  acceptable  for
the date argument:

     Jun 30 1981         30 Jun 1981
     May 1, 82           1/May/1982
     January 000005 75   0005-January-000075
     F/13-83             5/17/83

If the month and day are both numeric, the first number of the two, if
less  than  13,  is considered to be the month.  Otherwise, the second
number is considered to be the month.  For example:

     2/15/83             is February 15th
     15/2/83             is February 15th

You can abbreviate the month to as few characters as possible  without
causing it to be confused with another month.  Thus,

     O
     Jun
     Jul
     Ja

are acceptable abbreviations for October, June, July, and January.

Many commands allow you to give the day of the week or "today" for the
date.

If you specify the time along with the date, you must separate the two
arguments by at least one space and/or no more than one tab.

For the time argument you can specify:

     o  time according to a 24-hour clock:

             /AFTER:17:00:00

     o  AM and PM:

             @SET ALERT 5:00PM

     o  the following time zones:

                                                       Hour Offset
         Arguments             Zone                    from Greenwich

        GST, GDT, GMT   Greenwich                            0
        AST, ADT        Atlantic                             4
        EST, EDT        Eastern                              5
        CST, CDT        Central                              6
        MST, MDT        Mountain                             7
        PST, PDT        Pacific                              8
        YST, YDT        Yukon                                9
        HST, HDT        Hawaii/Alaska                        10
        BST, BDT        Bering                               11
        DAYLIGHT        Daylight time for your zone
        STANDARD        Standard time for your zone


Examples

     6:00PM-EDT     is 5:00PM EST
     6:00PM-PST     is 9:00PM EST
     6:00PM-GMT     is 1:00PM EST

Note that a hyphen (-) is required before the zone.

The basic time format is:

     hh:mm:ss

where:

     hh      is hours, must be less than 24, and is optional
     mm      is minutes, must be less than 60, and is required
     ss      is seconds, must be less than 60, and is optional

The colon between hours and minutes is optional.


Examples (based on a 24-hour clock):

     3       is 00:03:00AM
     125     is 1:25AM
     14:30   is 2:30PM
     25:33   is 00:25:33AM


Relative Date-Time Arguments

Many commands accept relative dates and times.  You can  specify  that
an  event  is  to  occur  at a certain amount of time from the current
time, from today, or from a certain day of the  week.   Likewise,  you
can specify relative times in the past.


Examples

     @SET ALERT +30      sets an alert for 30 minutes from now

     @DIRECTORY,         produces a listing of files that
     @@BEFORE TODAY      were created before today's date